Cleveland Clinic Foundation Program

Program Identity & Fit

Cleveland Clinic's integrated I-6 Thoracic & Cardiovascular Surgery Residency is a flagship academic program embedded in one of the world's highest-volume cardiothoracic surgery departments, with a nationally top-ranked heart program generating enormous case numbers (over 5,800 cardiac and nearly 2,000 thoracic cases annually) across a network spanning main campus, community hospitals (Hillcrest, Fairview, Akron General), a Level 1 trauma center (MetroHealth), a VA site offering early chief-level autonomy, and Akron Children's for congenital exposure. The six-year structure builds general surgical and cardiovascular foundations before transitioning to fellowship-level responsibility in adult cardiac, thoracic, congenital, and heart/lung failure surgery, culminating in a final year of trainee-chosen subspecialty concentration with full operative independence. Academic rigor is structural, not incidental: weekly didactics, surgeon-led wet labs, monthly journal clubs, and a research infrastructure spanning basic, translational, and clinical science (including dedicated cardiovascular genomics and data science centers) signal that the program expects residents to engage substantively with scholarship alongside elite technical training. This is a program built to produce future leaders in complex cardiothoracic and vascular surgery, not simply competent generalists, and it values residents who can absorb very high case volume while pursuing academic and subspecialty distinction.